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Friday, July 27, 2007

Co-working space in Chennai?

A co-working or co-office space in Chennai would be very cool.

Basically, the idea is that more than one company works in the same office. In co-working, which is geared towards individuals, each individual gets a table and a place to sit. In co-office, each company gets a workroom that can hold about 5 people, desks, computers. Office infrastructure such as a reception, coffee machine, printers, xerox, conference rooms are shared between all the companies. Maintenance is also taken care of by the space provider.

The rent and expenses are shared between all the companies. So an office space that can accommodate 4 companies will typically have a rent that is around 1/4 to 1/3 what it would cost to rent your own office.

These kind of spaces have big advantages for startup companies in particular.

One, the cost of office space is vastly reduced, so they can have an office at a much cheaper rent. The second big advantage is that they are in an environment with other startups, so during coffee breaks people are likely to run into other startup folks. The third big advantage is that these spaces are rented out on a monthly basis, so there is no need to take out a long term contract with up front advance and deposits.

If anyone knows of such a space in Chennai, drop in a comment to this post.

Hi,TutorVista,where I was working till recently was working out of the incubation pilot project at stpi,bangalore. It was a huge tidel park kind of building where each floor was a big company. but on the topmost floor was this new pilot thing startup zone.

it was awesome...

complete plug-n-play kind of environment where there were around 10 rooms of varying sizes hosting a company each . each room had between 2 ,upto 12 seats . available facilities:

- 4mbps internet with wifi- common canteen,cafeteria with catering -colorful,lively cubicles, awesome a/c, carpeted,the works- common conf rooms of varying sizes, common library,parking,blah blah. I could go on and on.

Each seat was 5000/- a month but it was worth it! you don't need to worry about anything else .can move in /out as you please.

The reason i pointed this out was that this was a pilot done in bangalore. but seeing its succes,all stpi's including the new stpi office in chennai (old mahab rd) are planning on the same lines.

We are starting up coworking spaces in Chennai - at Nungambakkam - the heart of Chennai - right now we can offer 6 seats with all infastructure for start up / individuals, professionals or even for a small branch operations for companies who want operations at Chennai.

This is a cool Idea Indeed, Wish it had picked up. We are looking for a 20-25 seater facility, In a good office to plug and play. The IT Parks are too large and the serviced offices too expensive. Is there an alternative ?

20-25 people is quite a lot. Most of these co-working spaces are for about 5 people or so. You can check out the current state of coworking in Chennai on this page - http://siddhi.blogspot.com/2007/11/updates-on-co-working-space-in-chennai.html

Also check out http://www.opencommune.com/ a new site to promote coworking in India (it's still very new and doesnt work fully though)

Ah Siddi! Thanks for the kick up my a$$ on this one. I have been going through some rough wind the past couple of weeks and have not been able to spend much time on OpenCommune (the coworking initiative) after all the initial hoopla.

Will start pushing the word around again now. Have had a lot of people just walk over to me for this kind of stuff. Thanks again for putting OpenCommune up here!

Hi Siddi,I have a 30 seater coworking office in T.nagar chennai. 12 seats are vacant. It is not a class A facility. No car parking. Please let me know if you are interested. email me : info@trinaytech.com

We have a same kind of moduel where the conference room coffe machine everything is shared by all the companies and you will be paying only for the seats which you use and the other actualls like teelphone etc......interested call 9941961116

I'm looking for a decent shared office space in chennai. My current requirement is just 1 or 2 workstations. I'm into technical writing and data entry etc. I can provide the computers. Please point me in the right direction

Great Idea! Not just cost effective but shared spaces also provide camaraderie that we all enjoy now and then at office. Our productivity depends on how focused we are and how others are. Shared offices will work for those whose work is mostly online, need limited or no verbal interaction and where everyone follows work ethics and mutual respect.

I have a property opposite Virtusa IT park in Ekkaduthangal. It is a independent house of 2500 sqft in 3 floors with 1 carpark. Planning to invest in furniture to convert into a co-working office. Any comments?

there is such kind of environment is already available in chennai.its full of start up and Fun office space. plus very spacious and neat.here you can meet with Australian, singaporian, Bangkok guys also.for details visit www.instantoffice.in

About Me

I am the founder of Silver Stripe Software where we develop web based SaaS products. We've developed three products - Tool For Agile suite of products for teams that follow a lean or agile process, Tour My App a product for SaaS developers to provide in-app guided tours for their users, and Sequence, a tool to take actions based on user behaviour.
I do a bit of programming, some photography once in a while and like to do some cooking at times.